Orlando studied design and communication at the University of Essen and at the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques in Paris. He has lived and worked in Hamburg, Paris, Madrid and now calls Berlin his home. Orlando has received an award of excellence from the American Press Association and honours from Nouveaux Talents. He has exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Bookfair and has taken part in group exhibitions in Essen, Duisburg and Paris.
When asking Orlando when he first fell in love with the discipline, he had this to say: “When I first studied graphic design in Paris about 15 years ago, me and a group of other exchange students created a fanzine called “Spunk” in which we published small comics and visual essays. This was the starting point of my career as an illustrator. The exercise allowed me to tell stories about simple things that surrounded me or that I discovered on journeys. It was French ‘nouvelle ligne claire’ – artists like Dupuy and Berberian, Avril and Loustal who showed me how deep and great things can be that at first glance look simple, light and easy or even shallow.”
What transpired was a burgeoning process of “travelling and collecting images and it was not merely a case of creating ‘snapshots’ of old ruins, but also of staying in dark hotel rooms and making freeform sketches and writing nonsensical stream of consciousness prose inspired by the day’s exploring. Short Cuts is a small collection of images extracted of those sketchbooks that Nobrow fortunately encouraged me to realise into book form.”